


the devil you know

by encroix



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 08:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2381564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encroix/pseuds/encroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Amy sorts out her head, and the mess Jake's made of things, just in time for his return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the devil you know

It happens six weeks after he leaves.  
  
Pretty standard, really, although it's her first. She's never really had a partner stick around long enough to have these kinds of dreams.  
  
Jake at the dockyards. Someone making him kneel. _bang bang_ \- back of the head like she's seen in the movies, and that's the end of Jake, and that's the end of Jake and Amy's partnership, and that's the end. That's how these things go, or so they say - deep cover is one thing, but you can never be too careful. Can never be careful enough. And Amy's spent her entire life being too careful, knows the kind of strain that entails, knows the pressure.  
  
When her phone rings just after three that morning, she nearly jumps out of bed, fumbling for it on her bedside table so clumsily that it skitters to the floor.  
  
She misses the call.  


 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(It isn't The Call.  
  
Burglary, armed suspect, some kind of firearm.

 

 

  
  
  
She's the first on scene.  
  
By the time Rosa gets there, she's draining her third Dixie cup of stale coffee and hoping to shake the sleep out of her eyes and the panic out of her system.  
  
"You all right?" Rosa asks.  
  
And she doesn't look up, just digs the tip of her pen into her notepad until she can hear the paper tear.  
  
"Amy?"  
  
She rubs at her eyes and rolls her shoulders. "You want to canvas the neighbors? Or you want to take the guy's statement?"  
  
Rosa clicks her tongue. "Neighbors were probably all asleep. Like the rest of us. Probably no one saw or heard anything until the alarms started going."  
  
She taps her pen against the paper. "Protocol."  
  
"Yeah," Rosa deadpans, "Sure. I'll canvas."  
  
"Great," Amy says, flashing a dead smile, before pushing past to interview the victim - some FiDi Wall Street suit who's got an itemized list of everything in his apartment.  
  
"Hey," Rosa calls, and she stops.  
  
She knows what she's going to say, and somehow, part of her wants to believe that if she doesn't turn around, then Rosa won't say it.  
  
"I keep thinking about him, too," Rosa manages, and it comes out stilted and a little stale because Rosa isn't this kind of person, and neither is she. They're just here to do their jobs, just like Jake's doing his. That's what she has to keep telling herself. "He's a good detective."  
  
She keeps walking.)  


 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
She calls Teddy for the first time that week.  
  
They have a cold dinner of sandwiches and light beer on the one day they manage to both have off, and sit and talk about nothing. It's kind of nice. Takes the edge off of thinking about other topics. About anything unpleasant.  
  
So he brings a copy of the penal code, and a couple of DVDs, and they spend a few hours just goofing off. Testing each other.  
  
She manages to laugh for the first time in what feels like forever.  
  
"That's what I like about you," she says, and he's grinning as he looks up at her from across the table. "Back at the Academy, people used to get so weirded out by this."  
  
Teddy's smile is placid. "I think they were scared."  
  
She arches a brow, the corner of her mouth twitching with amusement. "Of me?"  
  
He shrugs. "Yeah, Amy. You're smart, and you're beautiful, and you go hard for the things that you want and you're not afraid to let anyone know about it. It probably scares people."  
  
"Did I scare you?"  
  
He nods his head from side to side, humming. "Maybe at first. You're a lot nicer than people think."  
  
"I'm nice!" she replies, defensively.  
  
He chuckles. "Honey, _I_ know that. But other people..."  
  
"Lots of people think I'm nice! Everyone at work..." she begins, voice trailing off. "I'm nice."  
  
He reaches for her hand, and she flips open the reference book instead.  
  
"165.07."  
  
He clicks his tongue in thought. "Unlawful..."  
  
She grins.

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She hasn't even written out what she wants to say to him yet. It feels too much like an invitation given how much time is left on his assignment.  
  
But there's a page of her notebook with the title already written.  
  
Because she has to address this properly. There's things to consider. There's his feelings, for one, and their partnership for another. He's the best partner she's ever had, and one of the better friends, and she doesn't want to lose him. Not with something as silly as this. Because she knows Jake, and Jake wouldn't be happy with someone like her. Not really. Not when they don't make any sense.  
  
She's too uptight for him. She likes rules, and going the extra mile, and the idea of a future ladder-climb. She builds her life around goals, around rules, and Jake seems to take on each individual notice as a challenge to get around it.  
  
She wouldn't make him happy. But he's Jake, and he doesn't understand that yet, and he doesn't see it, and now he's off infiltrating the mafia and she has the weight of this confession on her with nowhere to put it.  
  
If she could yell at him, if she could be mad at him, she knows exactly what she'd say. (Or, she'd figure it out by the time she needed to say it.) But she can't because he isn't here; he's somewhere getting himself in danger, and she's stuck watching his empty desk collect dirt and the occasional odd smell.  
  
It wouldn't work out, and they'd make each other upset and unhappy, and challenge each other to the point where they wouldn't even know why they got together in the first place. It's a risky investment, and Amy doesn't make risky investments.  
  
He'll understand.  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
(Two weeks before the end of the investigation, she gets down six and a half drafts.  
  
There's the lighthearted joking one -- too awful to speak of -- and the serious one -- too melodramatic -- and the semi-motivational one -- too many adjectives. Eventually she settles on something that sounds two steps above yearbook, and one below resignation letter.  
  
Around five hundred words. Clocks in around three and a half minutes, on average.  
  
She hopes he doesn't mind.)

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He comes home.  
  
They're rushing the evidence bags into the lockers as quickly as possible and he's there in full mafioso regalia - terrible polyester ( _rayon_ , charles corrects) suit and gelled ( _moussed_ ) hair and a terrible earring stud.  
  
His mouth is wide with his typical Peralta grin, and she rubs her hands over her arms and tries not to smile so much. She's mad at him. She's good at being mad at him. She's got to remember that.  
  
He knocks his hand against her shoulder, and calls her name. "It's good to see you."  
  
"Yeah," she says, voice catching. "You too."  
  


 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
None of the preparation matters.  
  
Because he's Jake and she's Amy and no matter what she does to try to prepare, he's Jake; he'll find a way to get her to break her plans anyway.  
  
They're back at the precinct and he takes her into one of the spare file rooms, and he's halfway through a sentence about needing to talk to her, and she can't think of anything else. She has nothing to say; all of her remarks are leaving her mind at this moment, and she didn't even have the presence of mind to bring the notecards she'd deliberately left in her desk drawer for this kind of thing.  
  
"I have to ask..." he says, and she blanks.  
  
This is the moment when everything falls apart. When she has to ruin a good thing because he ruined it first, and things are going to get weird and messy and awkward and awful, and it'll be like those first two weeks at the academy and...  
  
"I'm still with Teddy," she says. "Romantic styles."  


 

 

 

 

  
  
  
(It isn't her speech.  
  
It's the opposite of a speech.  
  
It's the opposite of the five front-and-back index cards she has in the top drawer of her desk. It's six words, and two of them aren't even hers - they're his from _that night_ , and she doesn't want him to think about that night -- she doesn't want _herself_ to think about that night -- but that's what comes out of her mouth.  
  
Fuck.)

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It isn't what she thinks.  
  
Turns out her speech - her panic - isn't necessary; turns out that he was just another not-so-veteran cop who was scared of going undercover; turns out he was feeling alone and didn't want to feel that way.  
  
It's a relief.  
  
Really, it is. It means she can stop thinking about it, stop worrying about it because this is Jake - it's _Jake_ \- and she's Amy, and they know each other, and she should have expected this all along. She's pretty sure she's seen pamphlets on this kind of thing in the Captain's office once or twice.  
  
But it's ... comforting.  
  
Even if her stomach hasn't settled yet - from the panic! not the other thing, just worrying about the other thing - at least she knows that it's over.  
  
They can get back to being who they used to be.  
  
Before Jake, and before Amy, and sex tape jokes and case-solving competitions and secretly Windexing the top of his desk when he's left for the day.  
  
They can get back to normal.  
  
She knew he'd come to his senses. (She knows him like that.)  
  
  


 

 

 

 

(And he didn't mean it anyway, just like she always kind of figured he didn't. He's Jake and she's Amy and they know each other and he figured it out himself. Just like she thought he would.

She walks out of the file room, careful to avoid his gaze for at least the next hour. She's proud of them, of the way they've dodged this certain disaster.

How many people can say that?

Her pulse is thudding loud in her head and she thinks,  _how lucky, how great that he didn't mean it either._

She's grateful.

Really she is.)

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
There's a welcome home party that the Captain - the precinct - is throwing, so she dresses down and tells Teddy what time to swing by to pick her up and hopes that it isn't too awkward between them.  
  
It's been six months, and they've gone through about as much as two friends can go through together - conversationally - while still facing the threat of being scathed.  
  
He gets her her first drink. (It's disgusting.)  
  
The second one comes from Rosa, via one of the badges hanging out against the wall.  
  
("They're not with us, so I don't feel bad about taking their money," Rosa says, handing her the shot.  
  
And olive juice is a strong taste to wipe out of her mouth, so she figures why not.)  
  
The third and the fourth, she isn't quite sure where those come from.  
  
So by the time she circles the room and bumps into him again, she's pretty tipsy. Flushed from the booze and warm and feeling happy in the way that tequila can make you feel.  
  
He's talking to Sarge, and she heads over to him and nudges his shoulder. Terry smiles at her before stepping away to talk to Holt about something, and Jake's grinning at her the way he always does whenever she's a little drunk.  
  
"You going to get wasted?" he says.  
  
She knocks her fist hard against his arm. "Shut up."  
  
"Ow," he says, wincing. "That actually hurt."  
  
Leaning in, she wraps her arms around him in a hug, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. He's warm, and solid, smelling like soap and leather, and it's comforting in a way that she didn't think it' d be. Six months was a long time. She really did miss him.  
  
"You miss me?" he says, and she shakes her head.  
  
She holds the embrace for another moment. "I'm glad you're home," she whispers, brushing a kiss against his cheek as she pulls away.  
  
He can't quite hide the stunned expression on his face and she knows that it wasn't fair. It isn't fair to do anything like that after the things he's said, but she's had to deal with this for six months so maybe it's his turn to squirm.  
  
Her phone buzzes then, and she struggles to get it free to squint at the caller ID screen, but she already knows who it is.  
  
Twelve-thirty, right on time.  
  
"You going?" he says.  
  
She looks up, catches an unreadable expression in his eyes. Nods once. "Yeah," she says. "Have fun, okay? I'm going to kick your ass on that bet when we get back."  
  
"I wouldn't count on it!"  
  
She counts the steps from where she was standing to the door (thirteen), and from the door to Teddy (nine).  
  
She doesn't look back.  


 

 

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
Well. Maybe she does just once.

**Author's Note:**

> I did minor research on this, but none of the details about the police work may be as accurate as could be hoped for.
> 
> Beta'd very helpfully by jordan (@magisterequitum) and rachna.


End file.
